Open-Pot Pork Meatballs 开锅肉丸
Open-Pot Pork Meatballs is featured among the local specialties of Guangdong.
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Open-Pot Pork Meatballs (开锅肉丸) are Hakka pork balls, bound with cassava starch and steamed in small bamboo steamers, from Meixian District (梅县区) in Meizhou (梅州), Guangdong. Nanfang+ (南方+) names Bingcun town (丙村镇) as the home of the authentic version, and the dish is on Meizhou's municipal intangible cultural heritage list. The name means 'open the pot': they are meant to be eaten the moment the steamer lid comes off.
How it is made
Qiu Qinxin (丘勤新), who runs four chain shops in Meizhou city, told Nanfang+ that choosing the ingredients is the key step. The pork must be a particular cut from the front of the pig (前膈髻顶肉), and the cassava starch must be pure. The pork is cut into even pieces about the size of a chopstick tip; hand-chopped meat is springier and chewier than machine-minced. Cassava starch, stir-fried shredded squid, dried shrimp and the white part of spring onion are mixed in with soy sauce and pepper, and the mixture is pressed lightly into balls. Extras such as squid, shrimp or shiitake are up to the cook.
The balls go into small bamboo steamers over a high flame for 20 minutes. Qiu says bamboo keeps condensed steam from dripping back onto the balls and gives them a light bamboo scent. They have to be eaten quickly once the lid is lifted, because they lose their texture as they cool, which is where the name comes from.
Flavour and texture
A 2016 field report by Shanghai Customs College (上海海关学院) students describes the Bingcun balls as tasting strongly of pork, both springy and crisp, chewy without crumbling, and smooth and tender.
Where it comes from
In Hakka speech the word for 'ball' (丸) sounds like 'round' (圆), and the round shape stands for completeness, so the meatballs appear at festivals, weddings and funeral banquets as well as family meals in Meixian. Nanfang+ reports that the dish has more than 80 years of history. In Bingcun a shop selling them stands every one or two hundred metres along the central streets, and the shop Nanfang+ visited sells the mixture raw for people to shape and steam at home.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.